A current events round-up for conservatives
THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:
† The Magic Is Gone: If President Barack Hussein Obama needs proof that even his base has lost its lovin’ feeling, he need only look out one of the windows of the Oval Office yesterday to see thousands of protesters picketing the White House over the environmental impact of the transnational Keystone oil pipeline, The Associated Press reports:
Demonstrators chanted "yes we can, stop the pipeline," while other protesters carried a plastic tube simulating the pipeline that would run 1,700 miles through six states. The protest drew support from actor Mark Ruffalo, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner John Adams and NASA scientist James Hansen, each of whom spoke to the crowd.
The proposed pipeline by developer TransCanada would carry oil derived from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. Opponents say it would bring "dirty oil" that requires huge amounts of energy to extract and could cause an ecological disaster in case of a spill. They are calling on Obama to block the $7 billion project, which is currently being reviewed by the State Department.
It’s unclear how much of the demonstration Obama saw, as he busied himself on the links at Fort Belvoir in VA all afternoon.
Oh, and on the Northern end of the New York-Washington megalopolis, Reuters reports that Occupy Wall Street protesters paraded an effigy of Obama in the vicinity of Zuccotti Park:
† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: Voters are just a year away from giving President Barack Hussein Obama the comeuppance he so richly deserves, and The New York Times reports that he “faces the most difficult reelection environment of any White House incumbent in two decades,” in part because of “growing questions about the president’s capacity to lead”:
[A]fter three years of pitched battles between Obama and congressional Republicans, the country is heading toward a high-stakes contest. Election 2012 will be a contest not just between two candidates but also between two starkly different views of the role of government that underscore the enormous differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Given the public mood and the president’s standing, the 2012 election will bring a dramatic shift from the hope-and-change enthusiasm generated by Obama’s first run for the White House. The race will be not only more competitive but also far more negative.
The new Washington Post-ABC News poll paints a stark portrait of an agitated electorate that is almost inflexibly divided, with voters awaiting the showdown between Obama and his eventual challenger. About three-quarters see the country as seriously off-track and nearly everyone sees the economy in bad shape. …
Americans split evenly over whether they trust Obama or congressional Republicans to handle the economy, create jobs and protect the middle class. Asked which party they would like to see control Congress after the next election, 44 percent say the Democrats and 41 percent say the Republicans. …
Obama also has lost some ground in the way Americans view him. Those who say he is not a strong leader now constitute a bare majority – 51 percent – of the population, the first time he has dipped into negative territory on that crucial attribute. Criticism of Obama’s leadership is a key part of the GOP’s message in the campaign, and more than three-quarters of Republicans say he is not a strong leader, as do 53 percent of independents. A quarter of Democrats also agree with that assessment.
For his part, The New York Times' savvy statistician Nate Silver handicaps President Barack Hussein Obama's chances against Romney vs. against Perry. If Obama’s approval rating is stuck at 43 percent plus the economy remains stagnant economy, either Romney or Perry blow him away (the former gets 83 percent of the popular vote, the latter gets 59 percent). If Obama’s approval rating remains where it is now and the economy improves, he wins in a landslide over Romney and Perry (60 percent and 83 percent, respectively). Here is Silver's bottom line:
Average these four scenarios together and the probabilities come out to almost exactly 50-50. A month or two ago, when Perry and Romney appeared about equally likely to be the Republican nominee, it would therefore have been proper to think of the election as a toss-up.
With Perry having slumped in the polls, however, and Romney the more likely nominee, the odds tilt slightly toward Obama joining the list of one-termers. It is early, and almost no matter what, the election will be a losable one for Republicans. But Obama’s position is tenuous enough that it might not be a winnable one for him.
Editorial Note: Silver estimates "extremism" scores for this year’s Republican candidates by combining data based on Congressional voting, one based on fund-raising contributions and the other based on voters’ assessments of the candidates’ ideology in polls. By his reckoning, the most "extreme" candidate is Ron Paul (96) and both Romney (49) and Huntsman (40) are considerably to the left of the rest of the field. If Obama's popularity continues to stagnate in the low 40s or falls further and the economy remains weak, Silver doesn't think it will matter that much whether the Republicans run Perry, who is more conservative than Romney (67).
† Sub-Par Solution For Sub-Prime Loans: Part II: Remember Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA), the serial home mortgage defaulter (related article, last item on the page)? Well, she is now the focus of a House ethics investigation for (allegedly) coercing her aides to work for her campaign, which is a violation of House rules. But to hear her tell it, her only crime is being a black woman. USA Today reports:
Richardson, first elected in 2007, said the panel has overlooked the "well-publicized misuse of official House resources for personal purposes" by members of Congress who sleep in their offices "saving tens of thousands of dollars personally at taxpayers' expense."
She charged the panel with "discriminatory conduct" in investigating her while "failing to apply the same standards to, or take the same actions against other members, of whom the overwhelming majority are white males." …
This is the second ethics inquiry involving Richardson. The committee previously examined whether she received an improper gift from a bank that canceled the sale of a foreclosed home she owned in Sacramento. She was cleared of wrongdoing in that case.
The Associated Press actually looked into the racial breakdown of the House members involved in 33 investigations launched since January 1, 2010 and found that 12 of them (36 percent) involved black. Which means that 2/3 of them were not black.
† Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound: Ace reporter that he is, KRON’s Stanley Roberts wears through a lot shoe leather combing the Bay Area of SF looking for “People Behaving Badly.” He found one guy driving alone in the HOV lane and filmed him getting ticketed, only to have the motorist give him a legendary verbal beat-down on camera, MediaBistro reports:
“Why don’t they have you down there filming what’s going on in Oakland?” the guy asked Roberts, dismissing him with a hand wave. “They got your fat, lazy, non-relevant, non-factor ass out here filming highway patrol sh*t. That tells you how much you’re worth at your job.”
Snap!
† Only The Little People Pay Taxes: Republicans won huge gains in state legislatures in the 2010 election by “promising to restore fiscal stability” and “relished the chance to weaken the Democratic Party’s key constituency” by “taking on public-employee unions” (click here for related article) but “[v]oters in deep-blue California, Illinois and New York once again picked Democratic governors to run some of the most populous – and financially troubled – states in the union” and “[t]hey would have to show that they could cut costs despite their ties to unions,” The Washington Post reports:
[A] central issue would be states’ huge public-employee pension obligations.
There’s been some progress. In Illinois, where state public-employee pension plans have a worst-in-the-nation $80 billion unfunded liability, Gov. Pat Quinn and the Democratic legislature raised the retirement age to 67 and limited the maximum salary on which pensions can be based to $106,800. But Illinois pension funds still rely on an unrealistic average 8.25 percent projected rate of return.
In New York and California, Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown, respectively, have proposed changes to their states’ benefit structures. Both courageously address real issues: They raise retirement ages; curtail the practice known as “spiking,” under which employees can base pensions on one unusually high annual salary; cap six-figure annual payouts; and, most significant, increase current employee pension contributions. …
But there’s a catch: Except for increased employee contributions, the reforms mainly apply to new hires, not to the existing state workforce. This was apparently a bridge too far, politically and also legally, because state constitutions and court decisions make it difficult to reduce current pensions. …
Sooner or later, state and local governments must further rein in benefits for current employees – so that the cost of providing for public servants tomorrow does not make it impossible to provide actual public services today.
MI – which is led by a Republican – found a simple way to reduce government employee salaries and pension obligations: replace a percentage of the public employee workforce with contract workers, The New York Times reports:
Outsourcing becomes more popular during tough economic times as states and municipalities transfer the operations of facilities like prisons, school cafeterias and sanitation departments to private contractors. Governors or legislatures in Arizona, Louisiana, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have all proposed reviews of state agencies in search of opportunities to privatize operations.
Many local governments like Anaheim, Calif., and Luzerne County, Pa., have contracted out services including park maintenance, graffiti removal and tax claims. Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago recently outsourced recycling collection in parts of the city. …
Union leaders denounce the efforts to roll back years of negotiated wages and benefits. The public sector gave “people a chance to buy a home and send their kids to college,” said Eileen Kirlin, executive vice president of the public services division of the Services Employees International Union. When contractors take over and pay lower wages, “we’re just driving everybody down.”
One economist tells The Times that any savings on salaries and benefits are offset by contract workers receiving such government assistance as Medicaid and food stamps to supplement their low salaries.
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